Talent management the true silo free way

Archive for the ‘talent conference’ Category

A lot of things can be done online, virtually, but not all things in my opinion.

If you conduct a training, hold a presentation or doing something similar. Then most of the information flows one way. If you conduct a status meeting information flows many ways, but only one way at a time. Someone reports, the rest listen.

A talent conference is a discussion and discussions are not among the things most easy done online. A discussion needs more than voice. You get info from body language to to name one thing. That is not news btw. Yes we can use video conferences, but if you really want a creative discussion I still think you need to get together in a room.

And if you do talent conferences without discussions you do it wrong, and should stop doing it.

Here is a funny video showing what would be the case if real meetings were run like tele meetings.

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I’m a big fan of talent conferences, and I see far to few use them as the great tool they can be. I will explore them over a number of blog posts and i assume you know what a talent conference is, if not read more here.

A talent conference is a great way to actually discuss talent, what to do with it and how to asses it. You get a group together to actually discuss how they did their assessments of their subordinates. Out of that you will off course get the alignment you wanted. Everyone is assessed more or less using same criteria.

But even more important you get a discussion. Why did someone arrive at one assessment and not another. The others around the table gets educated, and everyone leaves with more tools in their daily work. Better at assessing their subordinates and having explained their reasoning to their peers makes them better at doing it consciously in the future.

Which also leads to better planning in how to develop talent. Discussing options and comparing results, reusing each other’s experience, it all leads to a better end result.

How often do you think managers today don’t know what to do and the answer is with another manager in your organisation? And how often do you think that opportunity to reuse knowledge is missed simply due to lack of communication? Talent conferences are all about communication, discussion and bouncing ideas and experiences.

At the end if the day you will get

* Managers better at assessing employees
* Employees assessed fairly and with same criteria in you organisation
* Managers better at thinking about how to use and develop talent

And that is 3 good reasons to actually invest in talent conferences. It’s not just good for the employees but also great for the participating managers.

All you need now is a great facilitator. And remember that if you want the discussion to happen, don’t do it online, do it face to face.